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Telegraph’s Editorial Silence on HK Protests Attackedhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2015/02/writer-attacks-telegraphs-editorial-silence-hk-protests/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2015/02/writer-attacks-telegraphs-editorial-silence-hk-protests/#commentsWed, 18 Feb 2015 01:49:12 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=181386At openDemocracy, The Daily Telegraph’s former chief political commentator Peter Oborne explains his decision to leave the newspaper. He focuses on allegedly soft coverage of HSBC, described by a former Telegraph executive as “the advertiser you literally cannot afford to offend,” and writes that he decided to go public in response to The Telegraph’s thin reporting of tax evasion involving the bank’s Swiss arm (as well as the daughter of former Chinese premier Li Peng). He adds, though, that he was also unsettled by the newspaper’s editorial silence over the protests in Hong Kong late last year:

The reporting of HSBC is part of a wider problem. […]

The paper’s comment on last year’s protests in Hong Kong was bizarre. One would have expected the Telegraph of all papers to have taken a keen interest and adopted a robust position. Yet (in sharp contrast to competitors like the Times) I could not find a single leader on the subject.

At the start of December the Financial Times, the Times and the Guardian all wrote powerful leaders on the refusal by the Chinese government to allow a committee of British MPs into Hong Kong. The Telegraph remained silent. I can think of few subjects which anger and concern Telegraph readers more.

On 15 September the Telegraph published a commentary by the Chinese ambassador, just before the lucrative China Watch supplement. The headline of the ambassador’s article was beyond parody: ‘Let’s not allow Hong Kong to come between us’. […]

[…] A free press is essential to a healthy democracy. There is a purpose to journalism, and it is not just to entertain. It is not to pander to political power, big corporations and rich men. Newspapers have what amounts in the end to a constitutional duty to tell their readers the truth. [Source]

Visa restrictions have plagued reporters at the New York Times, Bloomberg, Reuters. China once denied me a transit visa. That meant I could not change planes in the Beijing airport. And I was not seeking to stay in China or report a story. I just wanted to change planes to go on to North Korea. They would not let me.

Now, President Obama is going to reportedly bring up the issue of the journalist visa with the Chinese. But It’s a little late. He has already signed the visa deal. After the facts, it seems pretty late to me. So right now, what we have a lopsided deal that favors the Chinese. [Source]

After first taking an unrelated, clearly scripted, question from a state-owned Chinese paper — which drew a quizzical facial expression from Mr. Obama — Mr. Xi circled back, declaring that the visa problems of the news organizations, including The Times, were of their own making.

Mr. Xi insisted that China protected the rights of news media organizations but that they needed to abide by the rules of the country. “When a certain issue is raised as a problem, there must a reason,” he said, evincing no patience for the news media’s concerns about being penalized for unfavorable news coverage of Chinese leaders and their families.

The Chinese leader reached for an unexpected metaphor to describe the predicament of The Times and other foreign news organizations, saying they were suffering the equivalent of car trouble. “When a car breaks down on the road,” he said through an interpreter, “perhaps we need to get off the car and see where the problem lies.” [Source]

The Times has no intention of altering its coverage to meet the demands of any government — be it that of China, the United States or any other nation. Nor would any credible news organization. The Times has a long history of taking on the American government, from the publication of the Pentagon Papers to investigations of secret government eavesdropping.

The Times’s commitment is to its readers who expect, and rightly deserve, the fullest, most truthful discussion of events and people shaping the world.

China, with 1.3 billion people and the world’s second-largest economy after the United States, is a major force regionally and internationally and merits serious coverage. The Times will continue to give the country and its citizens honest reporting and attention. Mr. Xi claimed that China protects the rights of media organizations. Demanding that journalists tailor their coverage to suit the state only protects the powerful and those with something to hide. A confident regime that considers itself a world leader should be able to handle truthful examination and criticism. [Source]

Mr. Xi’s comments formalize a shift in the Chinese government’s approach, said Orville Schell, the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, and a longtime scholar on China. “There is a fundamental contrast between Western notions of the role of the press as a watchdog institution and Chinese, Maoist notions of the press as essentially a megaphone of the party and state,” Mr. Schell said.

Over the last 20 or 30 years, he said, that distinction has been less defined, as the Chinese permitted more robust coverage by Western journalists. “But I think under Xi we’re beginning to get something of a return to a more traditional Maoist notion not only of the media, but of arts and culture.”

The Arab Spring of 2011 marked a turning point, said Evan Osnos, a staff writer for The New Yorker who until recently covered China for the magazine, and for The Chicago Tribune before that. Chinese leaders watched authoritarian governments fall with very little warning, he said, and decided that “there were all of these latent threats to their political stability that had to be controlled.” [Source]

The translation here is that the New York Times reporters with pending visa applications for China should keep their bags in the closet. There are about six such folks, including Philip Pan, Chris Buckley, Austin Ramzy, Javier Hernandez, plus a photographer and a videographer. The newspaper reports no progress in the visa applications for those staffers.

[…] The New York Times has a number of correspondents now working in China, including Edward Wong, Jane Perlez, Andrew Jacobs, David Barboza (based in Shanghai) and others. The visa backlog places each of these correspondents in an unenviable professional position: Should they leave their posts, they can be pretty sure at this point that their editor won’t be able to replace them. So several are hanging on past the New York Times’s standard four-to-five year foreign correspondent term, according to New York Times international editor Joe Kahn. “We’re a little bit hostages,” Kahn tells the Erik Wemple Blog, referring to the professional pickle of his people (and not using “hostage” in any literal sense). “Some of our correspondents are okay with staying longer, others are willing to stay for a little longer but are also thinking about other assignments.” [Source]

The move is a curious one since similar written interviews then-Vice President Xi Jinping granted to the Washington Post in 2012 and then-President Hu Jintao gave to the Post and Wall Street Journal in 2011 resulted in criticism that those outlets were manipulated by the Chinese government into publishing propaganda.

[…] “In publishing the transcript, which was more press release or propaganda than news, The Post set a bad precedent with the authoritarian government in Beijing,” ombudsman Patrick Pexton wrote.

[…] Several foreign reporters told POLITICO the pre-trip written interview is indeed an established practice of the Obama White House, but one they have vigorously objected to, unsuccessfully seeking in-person exchanges with the president. They say roundtable presidential interviews with news outlets from countries the president is about to visit were common under Obama’s predecessors.

Most journalists frown on the practice of written interviews because they preclude spontaneous follow-up questions and because there’s no way to know whether the responses actually came from the interviewee or were generated by one of his or her media handlers. [Source]

[… W]hen we go on trips, this is something we do everywhere. As you know from covering us, we tend to do written interviews with outlets when we arrive in a country.

Our view is on the one hand, we need to engage. And the more the President’s voice can be heard in a country the better because people understand where we come from. So we do engage Chinese media. We engage CCTV in the Briefing Room every day. We engage Xinhua.

At the same time, we’ll raise issues of press freedom. And the President has raised it directly with President Xi in their believe meetings. We’ve raised our concerns about the status of some U.S. media organizations and the treatment – the adjudication of their visas. We’ve raised, again, our concern on having more free access to information here – not just as it relates to the news media, but as it relates to Internet.

So these are things that we will consistently raise, but again, I think better for the President’s voice to get out and to be heard in a country. […] [Source]

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/11/xi-blames-press-journalists-left-visa-deal/feed/0Confusion Over Demolition of Beijing Newsstandshttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/08/confusion-surrounds-demolition-beijing-newsstands/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/08/confusion-surrounds-demolition-beijing-newsstands/#commentsMon, 11 Aug 2014 16:45:41 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=176149Global Times’ Cao Siqi reports on the mysterious demolition (or relocation, according to local authorities) of 72 newsstands in Beijing’s Chaoyang district since July 31st. Operators claim that authorized stands have been removed without explanation or details about compensation, and that some of their number have been detained.

Since July 31, 72 newsstands have reportedly been demolished. The newsstands received a verbal notification at noon and were removed at midnight without any reasons being provided and no official documents shown to the newsstand operators before demolition, the Beijing Youth Daily reported on Saturday.

Local authorities meanwhile engaged in a blame game among different departments.

[…] However, the department responsible for the removal has not yet been identified, said an official with Beijing Post under the State Post Bureau, adding that “the one who removed the newsstands should bear the economic losses.” [Source]

Even though it is laughed at as a joke, I have noticed that the Global Times is mentioned in more and more of my friends’ articles. This is like embedding a commercial for the Global Times in the text of a column. In the liberal-leaning discussion of media transformation, it will be picked out as an example to explain how the system is so barbaric, indicative how much deeper it has intruded and how ubiquitous it has become.

On just about all of China’s hot stories, the Global Times is not afraid to display its crude opinions: Chen Guangcheng, the Southern Weekend incident, Pu Zhiqiang, Hong Kong’s “Occupy Central,” Taiwan’s Sunflower Student Movement – the list is long. It never uses complicated arguments and does not care about logic, and some of its sentences don’t even make grammatical sense. Its points are easy to pick apart, but this in no way implies that it is easy to defeat.

[…] The evil is not overcome but overtaken. The most practical way to deal with it is to not talk about it. After writing this column, I will not mention it again. It’s like a virus thriving in a particular political eco-system, if we cannot stop it, we must then quarantine it. If we cannot quarantine the crowd, we can at least quarantine ourselves. That way, we will not become its carriers and unintended promulgators. [Source]

In recent years, more and more Chinese Net users are forced to seek alternatives to surf the Internet outside of the Great Firewall (GFW), China’s Internet infrastructure, by using mirror websites that show blocked Google search results, or by using VPNs.

[…] Along with the growth of VPN services, GreatFire.org has also been boosting its services relating to mirrored sites. The organization has set up more mirror sites to make blocked content available to all Chinese without the need of a VPN. On Twitter, it has attracted over 13,000 followers and its Freeweibo account, which shows banned Weibo posts, has 23,000 followers, most of whom are Chinese.

[…] “We ask our users to fight against the GFW by reposting mirror sites, censored content or complaining to the government directly,” said Alpha, who believes that the fight against the firewall has been heating up. [Source]

“Preliminary investigation shows New Express under the Yangcheng Evening News Group published numerous incorrect reports about Zoomlion from September 2012 to August 2013. The editorial management of New Express was chaotic,” it said.

It ordered Yangcheng Evening News to revoke Chen’s journalist accreditation and overhaul New Express. The reshuffle of the management should start immediately, the statement said.

[…] A reporter with New Express said “provincial propaganda department officials had already paid a visit to the newspaper and spoke with editors who have handled the problematic articles” prior to the announcement by the Guangdong press regulator.

Another reporter with the tabloid felt sorry to see their chief editor leave because “he is a professionally capable editor”. [Source]

There are so many lingering problems and questions in this case. But one of the biggest ones, obviously, is whether Chen’s confession was coerced. It’s a fact that he was marched in for his televised confession between two police officers. He was in handcuffs and wearing a prison jumpsuit. Web users in China also noted what appeared to be (but no one can possibly confirm) an abrasion on his neck just inside his collar. Can anyone with half a brain for law and reason take this confession to mean anything at all?

Here is what Wei Yongzheng, China’s most prominent media law expert, said in an article today:

This program of China Central Television’s, allowing a detained suspect to face the television camera and confess before the whole country . . . directly violates Criminal Procedure Law, which states that “no person may be forced to confess their own crimes.” When someone has been deprived of their personal freedom, and when they are escorted out in prison garb and in handcuffs by a pair of brawny police officers — to say that they are consciously and willingly confessing their wrongs in their own words wouldn’t fool even a three year-old child.

[…] The upshot here is that the broadcast “confession” by CCTV’s Morning News program should be understood not as evidence of Chen Yongzhou’s guilt, but as a bleak illustration of how his rights have been violated by both police and the media. [Source]

Chen’s is the latest in a series of televised confessions that have caused growing alarm. At Christian Science Monitor, Peter Ford listed five other cases including those of Charles Xue and Peter Humphrey, and noted that another New Express journalist detained in August was allegedly offered his freedom if he would admit on camera to defamation. The reporter, Liu Hu, reportedly refused, and was subsequently arrested.

The confessions have short-circuited public debates that have at times been highly critical of the role of government officials and powerful commercial interests. At the same time, the confessions have undermined China’s efforts to cast its legal system as making steady progress in the direction of greater rights for suspects and court rulings less subject to the dictates of party officials.

“This is a pattern. When there is difficulty convincing people, the best way to kill a conversation is to have a CCTV announce that he’s guilty,” said Fu Hualing, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong. “Society is just so divided. They monitor the Internet so closely that sometimes they feel they have to end the debate.” [Source]

Lu Xun’s “confession” serves to poke fun at the Communist Party’s attempt to sway public opinion against the suspects before the law has had its say. Chinese netizens often resort to satire to express political opinions, particularly when direct criticism of central authorities is likely to lead to censorship, detention, or even physical harm. A popular cartoonist who calls himself Rebel Pepper captured this fear when he took to Weibo to post a cartoon of a man hanging from CCTV’s iconic Beijing headquarters as if in the gallows [here]. The accompanying text reads, “Finally I’m on CCTV.” For many Chinese entangled with the judicial system, the less famous they are, the better. [Source]

It is standard procedure to lay out red envelopes filled with cash for reporters who do nothing more than turn up to corporate press conferences; this climate threatens to make it impossible to determine who is a real journalist and who is a rogue. The problem is hardly new.

[…] The fundamental problem goes beyond the state’s disregard for the constitutional right to a free press. Corruption is so ingrained in the world of Chinese journalism that reporters, who are typically low-paid, often accept gifts or cash, and think nothing of it. Pay-for-play reporting is common in the newspapers, where companies can buy their coverage by the column-inch, and pay to block it at another rate. Not all Chinese journalists accept compensation from their subjects, far from it. But the dirty work of a few does enough to stain the whole system. [Source]

I am convinced of the authenticity of the investigative work done by microbloggers, that the car Chen was taken away in belonged to Zoomlion, the company he was accused of publishing more than a dozen hit pieces against.

[…] Some Chinese financial media have reported that the chairman of Zoomlion, Zhan Chunxin, is the son of Hunan’s former top judge. There also were unverified rumors that Zhan’s wife is the daughter of a former deputy Party secretary of Hunan, and that a vice president of Zoomlion is the son-in-law of another former Party leader in the Central Chinese province. Given these backgrounds, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that Zoomlion had put pressure on the Changsha government to launch another major assault on Sany by arresting and investigating Chen for the articles he had published. Although no one has pointed a finger at Sany, the obvious suspicion is that Sany orchestrated and funded Chen’s alleged attack stories against Zoomlion. China Central Television—where Chen’s confession aired on Saturday morning—most probably had the whole story handed to them by Zoomlion and its allies in the Hunan government, maybe even higher up. [Source]

Improved transparency is the best way for both companies and investors to sort through all this. If, as Zoomlion says and analysts believe, the company’s accounting is above board, it would have an interest in suing Mr. Chen and allowing the truth to out in an open courtroom.

[…] Even if Mr. Chen was wrong about Zoomlion, persecution of the press is bad for the Chinese economy. A healthy capital market can function only if investors can obtain accurate information about companies. Cases like Mr. Chen’s that show the authorities might be willing to suppress bad news about a company harm China’s ambitions for a healthy domestic financial market. [Source]

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/11/new-express-faces-overhaul-defending-reporter/feed/0Calls for Journalist’s Release Gain Momentumhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/10/calls-journalists-release-gain-momentum/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/10/calls-journalists-release-gain-momentum/#commentsThu, 24 Oct 2013 07:26:02 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=164402At China Media Project, David Bandurski writes that Guangdong’s New Express repeated its front-page plea for the release of journalist Chen Yongzhou for a second day running. Chen was detained by Changsha police operating outside their jurisdiction last week after a series of his reports allegedly “damaged the business reputation” of Hunan-based construction machinery manufacturer Zoomlion. Bandurski adds that Chen’s detention has now attracted attention from other media outlets:

So far, plenty of other Chinese media have followed suit with this story. We are hearing that a strongly worded editorial from Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily was removed by propaganda authorities. The headline of that editorial apparently was: “Cross-Regional Detention Sends Chill Through Media; The Abuse of Police Powers Does Not Stand Before the Law.”

However, the Southern Metropolis Daily has managed to publish a second editorial on Page 02 today, and it has plenty to say.

The editorial argues that the Chen Yongzhou case is about a serious abuse of power by authorities in Changsha. “Even more unsettling,” the editorial says, “is if local authorities act only to serve local economic interests, if they ignore legal limitations and preventative regulations to pursue cases and arrest suspects, not only is this the ugly result of the failure to limit power, but it becomes a serious example of power doing evil.” [Source]

Comments by officials from the State General Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television that it was “very concerned” for Chen came days after he was taken into criminal detention by police from Changsha, in Hunan following the publication in the New Express of articles he wrote alleging fraud at construction-equipment maker Zoomlion, based in Changsha.

“The administration would staunchly support normal media reporting and safeguard journalists’ legitimate and legal rights in conducting their reporting work,” the China Press and Publishing Journal cited an official as saying. “We are also against any abuse of press rights.” [Source]

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/10/calls-journalists-release-gain-momentum/feed/0Economic Observer: Media’s Responsibility in This Erahttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/04/economic-observer-medias-responsibility-in-this-era/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/04/economic-observer-medias-responsibility-in-this-era/#commentsMon, 22 Apr 2013 07:30:46 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=154854The Beijing-based Economic Observer marked its 12th anniversary last week with an editorial looking back over its history:

This of course isn’t just one media outlet’s personal history. We’re in a period of transition. The reality of China’s reform is that there are ups and downs and countless missteps. And the hardest part of reform is breaking old patterns, because no one is willing to give up their vested interests.

[…] In the past, many reforms have been unsuccessful because reformers romanticized them. They thought that with courage and planning, complex reforms could be carried out relatively quickly.

There are many people who call for reform and discuss policies, but there are very few who dare take responsibility, suffer and bear the trials involved in the reform process.

There’s nothing romantic about reform. It’s like dripping water wearing down stone. It takes long-term persistence and the tenacity to never give up, even when it seems like a hopeless cause.

A media outlet that’s willing to take responsibility will certainly share the same fate and breathe the same air as the era it lives in. We always believe that this is the era that can decide the future. All the dreams that China has for the future depend on what you and I do today.

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/04/economic-observer-medias-responsibility-in-this-era/feed/0Wall Street Journal Accused of Bribery in Chinahttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/03/wall-street-journal-accused-of-bribery-in-china/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/03/wall-street-journal-accused-of-bribery-in-china/#commentsMon, 18 Mar 2013 01:41:48 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=153106The Wall Street Journal has revealed allegations that its staff bribed Chinese officials to obtain information related to Bo Xilai’s former fiefdom of Chongqing. Officials at the newspaper’s parent company News Corp. say its own investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing, and claim that the charges may have been fabricated as a weapon against the Journal. The accusations surfaced amid a U.S. government investigation of misconduct by News Corp. employees in the United Kingdom. From Devlin Barrett and Evan Perez:

During the course of that broader probe, the Justice Department approached News Corp.’s outside counsel in early 2012 and said it had received information from a person it described as a whistleblower who claimed one or more Journal employees had provided gifts to Chinese government officials in exchange for information, according to people familiar with the case.

[…] According to U.S. and corporate officials, News Corp. has told the Justice Department that some company officials suspect the informant was an agent of the Chinese government, seeking to disrupt and possibly retaliate against the Journal for its reporting on China’s leadership. The company officials came to that view after finding no evidence of the alleged bribery and because of the timing and nature of the accusations, company officials say. It isn’t clear what, if any, evidence the company officials have for that claim, which reporters for this article couldn’t independently verify.

[…] The Chinese bribery allegations against the Journal arose around the time that U.S. and Dow Jones officials believed Chinese hackers were targeting Dow Jones’s computer systems, according to people familiar with the matter. That is one reason company officials say they suspected the informant’s actions were part of a broader attack on the paper.

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/03/wall-street-journal-accused-of-bribery-in-china/feed/0Yu Hua: Censorship’s Many Faceshttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/02/yu-hua-censorships-many-faces/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/02/yu-hua-censorships-many-faces/#commentsThu, 28 Feb 2013 17:49:22 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=152074Author Yu Hua explains the different levels of censorship applied to Chinese media—from tightly controlled film, through TV and newspapers, to books—and dissects the varying political and economic considerations that account for them. From The New York Times:

On Weibo, a kind of Chinese Twitter, I recently made a joking comparison between media censorship and the pervasive threat of contaminated food, a constant source of worry:

“There’s no end to these food scares,” a friend sighed. “Is there any hope of a solution?”

“Oh, all we need is for food inspections to be as forceful as film censorship,” I told him breezily. “With all that faultfinding and nit-picking, food-safety issues will be resolved in no time.”

More than 12,000 readers reposted this. One wrote: I know what we should do. Let’s have those in charge of film, newspaper and book censorship take over food safety, and have those responsible for food safety censor films, papers and books. That way we’ll have food safety — and freedom of expression as well!

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/02/yu-hua-censorships-many-faces/feed/0New York Times Hacking Highlights Other Caseshttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/02/new-york-times-hacking-highlights-other-cases/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/02/new-york-times-hacking-highlights-other-cases/#commentsFri, 01 Feb 2013 11:30:31 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=150894The New York Times admitted on Wednesday that it had been the victim of a four-month hacking campaign, apparently in response to its probing of premier Wen Jiabao’s family’s wealth. The attacks, it reported, seemed aimed at uncovering the investigation’s sources.

In the most recent incident, the Journal was notified by the FBI of a potential breach in the middle of last year, when the FBI came across data that apparently had come from the computer network in the Journal’s Beijing bureau, people familiar with the incident said.

[…] Among the targets were a handful of journalists in the Beijing bureau, including Jeremy Page, who wrote articles about the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood in a scandal that helped bring down Chinese politician Bo Xilai, people familiar with the matter said. Beijing Bureau Chief Andrew Browne also was a target, they said.

[…] “Evidence shows that infiltration efforts target the monitoring of the Journal’s coverage of China and are not an attempt to gain commercial advantage or to misappropriate customer information,” Paula Keve, a spokeswoman for Journal publisher Dow Jones, said in a written statement Thursday. Dow Jones is a unit of News Corp.

As with many cases of cyber espionage, the break-in is assumed to have started with a spear-phishing email, a socially engineered message containing malware attachments or links to hostile websites. In the case of the attack on the security firm RSA in 2011, for example, an email with the subject line “2011 Recruitment Plan” was sent with an attached Excel file. Opening the file downloaded software that allowed attackers to gain control of the user’s computers. They then gradually expanded their access and moved into different computers and networks.

[…] Evidence that the hackers are China-based in all of these cases is suggestive, but not conclusive. Some of the code used in the attacks was developed by Chinese hacker groups and the command and control nodes have been traced back to Chinese IP addresses. Hackers are said to clock in in the morning Beijing time, clock out in the afternoon, and often take vacation on Chinese New Year and other national holidays. But attacks can be routed through many computers, malware is bought and sold on the black market, groups share techniques, and one of the cherished clichés of hackers is that they work weird hours.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence has been the type of information targeted. The emails and documents of the office of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan activists, defense industries, foreign embassies, journalists, and think tanks are not easily monetized and so would apparently have little attraction to criminal hackers. The information contained in them would be of much greater interest to the Chinese government.

Security experts brought in by the newspaper have pointed the finger of blame at China. And, in all likelihood, they’re right.

However, it must be remembered that it is extremely difficult to prove who is behind an internet attack like this. That’s because it’s so easy to use compromised computers around the world to route attacks through – disguising the true origin.

Of course, even if China is identified as the starting point of an attack – it doesn’t necessarily prove that it the operation is backed by the Chinese government or intelligence services. It could just as easily be a patriotic group of skilled, independent Chinese hackers upset with how the Western media is portraying their country’s rulers.

But let’s not be too naive… In all probability, the New York Times’s conclusion is correct, and this attack was sanctioned by the powers that be in Beijing.

“Advanced attacks like the ones the New York Times described in the following article, (http://nyti.ms/TZtr5z), underscore how important it is for companies, countries and consumers to make sure they are using the full capability of security solutions. The advanced capabilities in our endpoint offerings, including our unique reputation-based technology and behavior-based blocking, specifically target sophisticated attacks. Turning on only the signature-based anti-virus components of endpoint solutions alone are not enough in a world that is changing daily from attacks and threats. We encourage customers to be very aggressive in deploying solutions that offer a combined approach to security. Anti-virus software alone is not enough.”

The timing of all this is significant for anyone interested in the prospect of reform: this attack has unfolded at the very moment that the new Chinese leadership, under Xi Jinping, has pledged to root out corruption before it destroys the Party. Xi has been making so many gestures of reform that he has persuaded some longtime China-watchers to take him seriously.

[…] The renewed commitment to combating corruption isn’t looking as sincere. On the contrary, this case feels like déjà vu for the Times: in 2004, the Chinese government detained the Times researcher Zhao Yan, accusing him of leaking state secrets. As evidence, the investigators cited a photocopy of one of Zhao’s handwritten notes; the Times pointedly noted, “questions remain about how security agents obtained a copy of the note. One possibility is that agents entered The Times’s Beijing bureau without permission.”

The most important outcome here might be the chilling effect: Now that a Chinese attack on the New York Times is international news, any dissident or potential whistle-blower in China will be wary of talking to journalists at the paper—or, for that matter, all journalists.

Investigators still do not know how hackers initially broke into The Times’s systems. They suspect the hackers used a so-called spear-phishing attack, in which they send e-mails to employees that contain malicious links or attachments. All it takes is one click on the e-mail by an employee for hackers to install “remote access tools” — or RATs. Those tools can siphon off oceans of data — passwords, keystrokes, screen images, documents and, in some cases, recordings from computers’ microphones and Web cameras — and send the information back to the attackers’ Web servers.

[…] The attackers were particularly active in the period after the Oct. 25 publication of The Times article about Mr. Wen’s relatives, especially on the evening of the Nov. 6 presidential election. That raised concerns among Times senior editors who had been informed of the attacks that the hackers might try to shut down the newspaper’s electronic or print publishing system. But the attackers’ movements suggested that the primary target remained Mr. Barboza’s e-mail correspondence.

“They could have wreaked havoc on our systems,” said Marc Frons, the Times’s chief information officer. “But that was not what they were after.”

What they appeared to be looking for were the names of people who might have provided information to Mr. Barboza.

I would like to apologize to the NYT computer support folks I snapped at after they reset my password without warning nytimes.com/2013/01/31/tec…

A source close to Guangdong’s provincial government said Wang Genghui, a deputy editor-in-chief of Nanfang Media Group, which owns the newspaper, had taken over from Huang Can, Southern Weekly’s editor-in-chief since 2009. Huang had been sidelined and was likely to be transferred to another post in the group.

“Wang has a rather popular image as he is more willing to listen to editors and journalists,” the source said. “But this is likely to be a transitional role to restore normal operation at the newspaper as soon as possible.”

This week’s newspaper included a veiled protest saying that editorial procedures should be respected and made corrections – a typographical error, the erroneous numbering of the edition and a factual flaw that said flood control work by “Yu the Great” happened 2,000 years ago, instead of 4,000 years ago.

A comment below the corrections, signed by editorial staff, read: “Newspaper mistakes are always in black and white. In every link of editing and publishing a newspaper, its standard processes should always be respected and followed. We have never been more keenly aware of this.”

At a meeting in Zhongnanhai in Beijing on the night of Jan. 9, Xi, visibly displeased, asked if the media control division was not adding to confusion, sources familiar with the discussions said.

[…] Liu had decided to impose penalties, including dismissals, against editors and reporters who disobeyed the order. But Xi gave instructions not to punish journalists who protested the propaganda department, according to a party source formerly involved in media control.

Xi has apparently attempted to contain the fallout even by accepting demands from Southern Weekly reporters.

He decided to remove the chief of the propaganda department of the Guangdong provincial party committee, who led prior screening of the Southern Weekly.

The official is not expected to leave the post until at least March, when the National People’s Congress is scheduled to convene, because an immediate removal would reveal confusion within the party.

“This is the first time in China’s history, with the exception of June 4th, that there’s been such a large-scale collective protest by Chinese journalists against the central government’s propaganda department’s restrictions and suppression,” said Cheng Yizhong, who co-founded the Beijing News with Dai [Zhigeng], referring to the Tiananmen Square protests.

But Cheng said he expected no improvement in freedoms, predicting authorities would try to pre-empt any direct challenges by strengthening controls over social media. Cheng was arrested in 2004 on embezzlement charges that his supporters said were politically motivated. He was later released.

The editor at the Beijing News said management had warned staff not to talk about the incident, especially to foreign reporters, who “could make the higher-ups lose face”.

The statement was not a sweeping denial of the article. The statement acknowledged that some family members were active in business and that they “are responsible for all their own business activities.”

While the statement disputed that Mr. Wen’s mother had held assets, it did not address the calculation in the article that the family had controlled assets worth at least $2.7 billion.

Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for The Times, expressed confidence in the article. “We are standing by our story, which we are incredibly proud of and which is an example of the quality investigative journalism The Times is known for,” she wrote in an e-mail.

The lawyers’ statement represents an unusual move for the family of a senior Chinese leader. When Bloomberg News published an article in late June describing real estate and other assets held by the family of Vice President Xi Jinping, his family did not respond publicly.

He Weifang, a law expert at Peking University, said the statement was more of a gesture than a substantial legal document. “It was a demonstration of the attitude of a single party [the Wen family], intended to show the Chinese public that [The New York Times] report wasn’t factually correct,” He said.

If the Wen family does take the Times to court, it could be a formidable undertaking.

“Then the case would get bigger … and even out of control,” He said. “Based on this rationale, I reckon it’s not likely [the Wen family] would sue The Times.”

[…] Pu Zhiqiang, a Beijing-based civil rights lawyer specialising in press freedom and defamation cases, said the statement was more like a declaration of innocence. “It’s understandable why the family asked the lawyers to make the statement, but to me it didn’t say anything. It’s more like a public oath or some act of public relations.”

Official statements from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are above the fold in the People’s Daily. The blue headline in the lower left reads, “Ignoring Historical Fact Effects the Present.”

Reference News: China Will Not Yield to Japan’s “Island Purchase”

Qilu Evening News:
On “Buying Islands,” China Tells Japan: Do It Your Way, There Will Be Consequences;
China Declares Baseline of Diaoyu and Subsidiary Islands;
Wen Jiabao: We “Will Never Yield an Inch”

Oriental Morning Post:
Japan to Sign Contract “Nationalizing” Diaoyu As Early As Today;
China and Japan Face Grimmest Conflict of the New Century;
China Will Absolutely Not Yield on Issue,
Moves Forward with Legal Counterattack,
Declares Baseline of Diaoyu and Subsidiary Islands;
Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “Chinese Government Will Not Sit Idly by Watching Territorial Sovereignty Infringed Upon”
Yang Jiechi Summons Japanese Ambassador;
Japan Will Be Responsible for All Repercussions;
China Will Launch Monitor of Diaoyu and Subsidiary Islands

This Shenyang paper’s front page features the Foreign Ministry statement surrounded by 56 blood red fingerprints. The larger text towards the bottom reads, “The days when the Chinese people let themselves be bullied are gone forever.”

]]>http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2012/09/front-page-fury-over-diaoyu-purchase/feed/5Advice for Gu Kailai: Lose Weight to Leave Jailhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2012/08/advice-for-gu-kailai-lose-weight-to-leave-jail/
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2012/08/advice-for-gu-kailai-lose-weight-to-leave-jail/#commentsWed, 22 Aug 2012 20:24:25 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=142114Netizens are going crazy over the telling placement of headlines in yesterday’s edition of the Shandong paper 6 AM Today (今晨6点). At top is a photo of Gu Kailai at her trial and the headline “Bogu Kailai’s Commuted Death Sentence.” (Chinese media refer to her using by combining her married and maiden names.) Below the fold, a mouse peers out from a beer can. Unable to squeeze itself out, the headline reads, “Go on a Diet, Then Come on Out.”